After teaching hundreds of students to sail, a re-occuring truism continues to emerge. Learning to sail is best done on a small tiller boat. This concept is not new. It is probably as old as sailing itself. This fact is demonstrated in the ASA instruction standards. It is in line with most internationally recognized organizations and, experts such as Bob Perry, most recently in a "2010 Sailing" magazine article.

Personally for a Basic Keelboat class I prefer; a sloop rigged sailboat of about 22' - 26' in length, a fixed keel, tiller, and hank on sails as a school boat for Basic Keelboat instruction classes. Yes, you may learn to sail keelboats on larger vessels; 34' with a wheel, roller furling and, an inboard diesel, I did ! But...

A smaller boat accelerates the learning curve. I won't have to coach you into feeling the effects of a gust, chances are, your body felt the pressure change in the tiller and the change in heel angle. It won't be neccessary for me to coach you into feeling the effect of the mainsheet traveler on weather helm, your tired hands and arms will thank you when the traveler is eased to leeward, the boat will flatten and the tension on the mainsheet is reduced, the boat accelerates, re-trim the main... Heaven! So much of sailing is feel! When you learn on a small boat you become sensitive to the small variances of boat attitude and rhythm. Your knowledge of these things will allow you to interpolate, extrapolate, forecast and generally make better informed decisions. The same sensitivities apply to sailing larger boats but... it is much more difficult to teach the ability to sense or be aware of these movements without first having small boat experience.

Learning to sail in a small vessel like this is the quickest, simplest way to become aware of a boat's character and the effects of; wind, waves, balance, currents, eddies and learn to recognize the boats movements under different points of sail. A small boat rewards you immediately when maneuvers are correctly executed. The boat may also instantly inform you of a poor maneuver or technique. Both of these conditions are learning experiences. However, the lessons where the boat has negatively reinforced a poor sailing maneuver are quickly assimilated and seldom repeated, (a little white knuckled panic is a great learning tool). In an effort to deliver the best sailing instruction possible, I will strive to limit my instruction of Basic Keelboat to smaller vessels as I have described here. The advantage to the student is the accelerated learning curve. The skill set and tactics learned on a smaller boat apply to directly larger vessels. However, the student will have a greater degree of understanding of the underlying principles and a greater ability to make better informed judgments on boat handling. An ideal class size is 2 - 4 students. This is true whether it is a Basic Keelboat class, Basic Coastal Cruising or Bareboat school.

The goal at each level is to give the student as much knowledge as possible without having a melt down. As a rule the lectures and discussions go well beyond the ASA minimums. The vast majority of students score well on their written tests, not because they were coached with answers rather, because they acquired an in depth understanding of the material.